Knowledge Management in Transition Economies: Selected Key Issues and Possible Research Avenues

Most of the existing literature on knowledge and knowledge management has a Western or Japanese origin. While this literature provides important insights and findings, these may not necessarily be successfully replicable in other contexts and may lose some of their relevance when applied there. Such and similar observations have given a rise to a substantial number of knowledge management studies conducted in non-Western settings, among those transition economies. We highlight three particular challenges to the knowledge management literature in transition economies: moving beyond the extension of existing knowledge to instead developing contextualized and distinct knowledge; shifting from studying unidirectional knowledge transfer to examining multidirectional knowledge flows; and changing emphasis from studying knowledge transfer to studying knowledge creation

The Development of Russian Multinational Enterprises From the 1990s to the Present

While the internationalization of Russian multinational enterprises (MNEs) has increased significantly since the early 2000s, this phenomenon has attracted limited attention among scholars. In the present paper we examine the key characteristics of Russian MNEs and use the literature on emerging market multinationals and Dunning’s OLI paradigm to trace Russian MNEs’ development from the 1990s to the present. We analyze this development, particularly in regard to ownership structure, location choices, entry modes, and motives to internationalize. We analyze how Russian MNEs have evolved into powerful entities and contributed to Russia’s modernization and integration into the global economy. &nbsp

Institutional environment, innovation capacity and firm performance in Russia

Purpose &ndash; Following the demise of the Soviet Union in 1992, Russia undertook major institutional and market-oriented reforms to enhance the competitive advantage of domestic enterprises. Although Russia has experienced rapid growth over the last two decades, the extent to which institutions in Russia impact on firm innovation and performance remains poorly understood due to a lack of research on the subject. This paper seeks to contribute to the literature on the competitiveness of Russian firms by focussing specifically on the extent to which the state of the regulatory quality, rule of law, and corruption affect the innovation capacity and performance of firms in Russia.Design/methodology/approach &ndash; The study uses structural equation modelling and data from a large-scale firm level survey (n=787) of firms in Russia undertaken by the World Bank in 2009. It investigates the direct and indirect perceptions of respondents of the effects the current institutional environment has on the innovation capacity and performance of their respective organisations.Findings &ndash; The results show that regulatory quality, rule of law and corruption have strong direct and negative impacts on both the innovation capacity and performance of firms, and that innovation capacity strongly mediates the effects of institutions on firm performance. The results suggest that the current state of the regulatory quality, rule of law and corruption in Russia inhibit firm innovation and their resulting performance.Research limitations/implications &ndash; The findings should be interpreted with caution to the extent that the study is limited to only three elements of the formal institutional environment and does not take into consideration the role of informal institutions. These two limitations present avenues for future research.Originality/value &ndash; The study is one of the first to provide empirical evidence based on a large-scale survey of the extent to which formal institutions inhibit innovation and firm performance in Russia, and provides valuable guidance to business policy-makers in Russia on possible avenues for enhancing the overall competitiveness of Russian firms.<br /

The Impact Of In-Groups And Out-Groups On Knowledge Sharing In Russia And China

Management researchers have suggested that knowledge sharing has an important role to play in developing competitive advantage for organisations. It could be argued that the need to build advantage is even greater in the transition economies that are increasingly internationally oriented. Yet, it has been suggested that people in transition economies such as Russia and China have a propensity not to share knowledge. We proffer that Russians’ and Chinese’ willingness to share knowledge is highly influenced by group membership. By examining the extent to which group membership influences the processes of knowledge sharing in the Chinese and Russian cultural and institutional environments, we theoretically explore how in-groups and out-groups facilitate and impede knowledge sharing. Key Words: China, In-groups, Knowledge Sharing, Out-groups, Russi

the role of disseminative capacity

There is a limited amount of studies, which investigate how different managerial practices may influence the behavior of knowledge senders in multinational corporations (MNCs). This paper addresses this gap by looking at whether and how certain expatriation practices can enhance a) the ability and b) the willingness of expatriates to transfer the knowledge they possess from the headquarters to the respective subsidiaries. By stepping on two bodies of literature, namely the knowledge transfer literature and the expatriation literature, we suggest that MNCs may enhance the expatriates’ willingness to transfer their knowledge through the employment of long-term expatriation practices. Expatriates’ ability to transfer knowledge may be increased through their involvement in short-term assignments, frequent flyers arrangements and international commuters practices. We test empirically the hypotheses on the basis of data from 92 subsidiaries of Danish MNCs located in 11 countries. Key words: knowledge transfer, MNC, expatriation, dissemination capacit